the reason I'm using a raid as opposed to one drive...if your using just one drive, and it craps out unless you can boot it up or access long enough to obtain your data. I have personally lost 3 single drives for back up and its just one of those its over kind of deals...

I used Raid 1 for my back up purposes from 2003 till the summer of 2007. I was looking around and for something that can serve files, and act safe place to store data. I decided that a RAID 5 seemed to be able to fit the bill, plus I got more drive usage then a Raid 1, plus I could lose 1 drive and it would still be accessible.

Do I have the wrong idea on RAIDs? I just want a secure redundant place to save and serve my files. Servers are a new thing to me as I haven't done a lot of data storage / data back ups. Short of using ghost, and saving them to a central point, and then pulling the images back if need.

I have the hardware right now, As I said is there something better that I could be doing to achieve my goal of having a redundant Networked addressed storage system?

My opinion is that mirroring (raid 1) is the way to go. It gives you the ability to lose one drive and continue. Also, this way, all your data is one each drive. They can be read using no special drivers or software, from a LiveCD or other OS. This kind of mirroring can be done totally by the OS itself, no hardware controller needed. If you have a raid 5, you depend on the raid controller being operative to get to your data.

Mirroring does not totally protect your data. In case of some mishap (like if you accidentally files ), it is gone from both copies at once. That's where the suggestion of having another drive that gets synced like once a day comes in. If you go "oops", you can always "step back" to the point of last sync operation. This is easily done using a simple script that is called from crontab.

Using any RAID configuration for even a thought of backup is dangerous

Ipcop, Freesco, Smoothwall and other firewall solutions have more done than a modified kernel.

The kernel does not have alot of effect on the firewall designed OS.

Using a all in one solution is dangerous, data is then open. All that is needed is to own that box and all bets are off. Using another machine you might be able to stop an attack or at least create another level for an attack against you. For every service (like X connections) allows onemore entry point to your server. Learn nmap, learn how attacks are doneand you then can become scared.

No system is secure and thoughts to the other wise is clueless. The thoughts that there is nothing on my computer worth stealing. Well your information is not usually important your box and internet connectionis. You an owned box YOU can be held liable for the spam or worse thingsthat are coming from it.

This subject is big it took me about 3 years to feel comfortable with it.

NONE of my servers have anything more than needed. NO X, nothing that is needed. Slackware has about 4 gigs if a full install is done. My server installs are 150 megs. Every piece of software that is not neededis adding an attack vector.

Look at the open ports on 5.8 SOHO.

I hope my response allows a thorough understanding before just doing your project. It has been done before but is your network worth the risk of someone owning your data?

Big paws I completely appreciate your feedback, and I know nothing is 100% the only thing that claims near perfection when it comes to this and acting as a layer 3 device is OpenBSD, I could never get it going in the way I wanted so I stuck to Ipcop. I've played with nmap, and I use to be on the insecure.org mailing list. I know a few guys that are really good at pen-testing and though they were unable to get into my network, they like myself know that a motivated person, or group could.I was realizing today that yes my AiO server idea maybe a huge security risk waiting to happen.

I'll keep my ipcop box for the time being as is, and keep the layer in place as I agree the more to go through will slow a motivated person and having it, is a good idea. (you got my paranoid brain going again.) My plan would be to switch the computer its using to something that consumes as little power as possible...this being a later project.

Now with the server, and it being a RAID 5, the reasoning behind picking a raid 5...I had a lot of conversations with people as to the most bang for your buck when using a RAID to back up and yes RAID 5 gives you more of your disk space as usable, (in comparison to RAID 1) though you still loose a percentage of space based on how many drives you have in the array.

I as was said before I use to run a RAID 1 and felt relatively safe with a mirroring situation and in my opinion that would be the best for part of a back up plan, the other which I had setup and was using hence the reason I had a back up to go to when I gooned up my server the other day. All be it an older copy of data.

What I'm looking for is 1 TB of secure storage (minimal 2 copies of any given data) protected as much as can be from drive failure. Of whats stored with 250gigs being in that 'mission critical' kind of data. Being stored periodically onto a slaved drive or something that is connected via usb.

My main goal for the back up system is fairly simple...

I throw the data onto a network share point, its available to users with correct credentials.Things such as music rips/tv rips/dvd rips are available to all as read-only, with user credentials read/write access is granted.

As for the level of raid I think I'm going to try a raid 1 I have 4 drives all 320, do one array as raid 1 and the other as jbod...get me a 1 TB drive and drop it in a drive enclosure as a 3rd back up for the critical stuff and a second for the none.

I looked at rsync and looks promising I'm just not sure about how to set it up, all I want it something to read the drive that is to be backed up, note the changes, and sync the changes, only. So you do one big back up, then a bi-weekly sync of only changed files.

The end resulting image(s) left behind is 100% accurate copy of what the partion/folders had at that time the image of last sync, and could be put on to a new drive as simply as copy and paste.

Is this do-able? Is there any changes to this plan that any one would suggest?

rsync will do the job as the way I mount my drives saves me the need of backing up to a back up...if you know what I mean. I don't keep anything other then settings on my desktops. I may play with unison, as then I'd have everything on the box directly...

I like your quote "The solution needs to fit the need." Its like the one I use in my signature "can it do the job you desire, in the way you wish?" I used that as my model for picking my linux os...ended up on vector.

I've decided to change up the way things are organized and running on my server, all the data recovery software I ran must of fowled up something because my read times, and lag is unbelievable...

so I'll be going from a RAID5 to 1 array being RAID 1 and the 2nd being jbod giving me 320 gigs of mirrored data and 640 gigs of drive space spanned over two disks. I have a usb 320 gig drive that I'll be using rsync with to send data, and as I get complete series of things, I'll be dumping them off onto hard drives and storing them in electrostatic bags on my parts self so should the jbod array drop I can rebuild from back ups...I have tones of drives kicking around so it'll be fill then file, and if anything happens there good to go, I think the data break down ratio on a hard drive is considerably slower then that of optical burned media...as in the 7 years I've been storing my stuff on cd and dvd I've lost about 5% to corrupted copies, and 10% have seen data degradation.

I think as an os on the server I may switch to windows media center...or debian, I'm leaning towards debian, I just don't want to get stuck when it comes to setting up the samba shares...Though the purpose of this box is data storage, I can't ignore the advantages of the linux file system. I'm just more comfortable admining on a windows box.

heres a crazy idea I was pondering...could you format your drives as ext3 or reiserfs, all except that of your windows partition, and have windows read/write to them, and share them through the windows share system?

heres a crazy idea I was pondering...could you format your drives as ext3 or reiserfs, all except that of your windows partition, and have windows read/write to them, and share them through the windows share system?

I don't believe Windows is capable of reading or writing to any filesystem other than its own (NTFS or VFAT). Why not instead, create a seperate VFAT or NTFS partition which you then use to share files between the Linux/WIn systems (because Linux can read/write to these). Or you can use Samba to share between the two systems....

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